


In An Unknown Place

by quicksparrows



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 04:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6141029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Truthfully, it takes time to settle into our choices.</p><p>[Extremely minimal spoilers... for now. ]</p>
            </blockquote>





	In An Unknown Place

**Author's Note:**

> At the time of writing, I have finished Birthright and am at chapter 14 in Conquest and the consequences of the choices break my heart; this game is so much darker than Awakening! There's so much hope and yet such bleakness, too.
> 
> I mean to make this a collection of short stories about choices, set ambiguously (or variously, as needed) between the three paths.

 .

 

 

 

 

"Would you have killed me if I chose Nohr?"

Lamb waits for his reaction, but she doesn't get one. Ryouma just finishes his brushstroke, his wrist high and poised. Lamb waits, and waits, and then when he has finally finished the character, he says: "Why do you ask?"

"It's just bothered me lately," she says. "Xander wants me dead, even though I've been his sister for almost as long as I remember. If I'd chosen differently..."

She pauses. So does he, brush hovering over the inkstone.

"Would you want me dead?" she asks, earnestly.

Ryouma sets down the brush.

"Come here," he says.

Lamb gets up and moves to him, and he gestures her to sit at his side, so she does. She looks up at him, at his artfully disheveled hair and serious expression, and then she looks down at his hand when he places it on her knee.

"Lamb," he says, soberly, "you did not choose Nohr. You made your stand with Hoshido. What might have been is irrelevant."

"I know," Lamb replies. "I'm only wondering. Would you want me dead?"

"No," he says. "I could never harm someone as dear to me as you are."

Lamb nods. She feels soothed, in some little way, until he adds: "I would bring you home to us by any means."

Xander would have laid waste to the people she now calls siblings, let their blood soak the green fields red without mercy, and then he'd kill her too. He'd insist on doing it personally, because that's just how Xander is. He and Ryouma are much alike, in many ways, but Lamb has no doubt Ryouma would go one step further in leaving her alive. He doesn't have Xander's cool reservation, or his paradoxical softness.

Ryouma's hand is broad and firm on her knee, supportive and yet also heavy.

"You needn't worry, Lamb," he says, low and soft. "You're away from those monsters now."

But she sits there, a dragon-child with her hair still curled in the Nohrian style, her new silk kimono hiding the black lingerie comfortable to noblewomen from Krakenberg, her hair adorned with black jewelry. Ryouma has not yet convinced her to replace the hairpiece with flowers or something sweeter, more Hoshidan, nor does he know what she still wears under her clothes, and his little comments on her hair roll off her skin like water.

"I'm home with my family," she says.

Saying that feels like it's meant to soothe him more than her, but his hand relaxes, and he returns his eyes and focus to his calligraphy.

"It's meant everything to have you back," Ryouma murmurs. "I know it's been difficult for you to adjust to our life, our ways... but it will get better in time, Lamb. I promise you."

Lamb just thinks of Xander teaching her to write, his warm hands manipulating her fingers to hold the pen properly. He'd been so proud when she'd written her name in full, even if it had been hopelessly askew.

Watching Ryouma's artful brushstrokes, all she feels is loss.


End file.
